


four hours now since i've wandered through your place

by rushes



Series: cape cod [1]
Category: Banana Fish (Anime & Manga)
Genre: Episode 6, M/M, bed...mattress?...floor??....sharing bc i'm weak aND THEY WERE NEXT TO EACH OTHER, day 1 of the cape cod trip, oof nope it was floor sharing they only had a sheet
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-11-12
Updated: 2018-11-12
Packaged: 2019-08-22 06:57:45
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,554
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16593047
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/rushes/pseuds/rushes
Summary: Now it seems Eiji’s always searching for Ash. He’d felt the absence in the house between the noise of all the others, saw the sun burning down into the reddening light leaking through the gap in the curtains, and so he’d slipped out the door to find Ash standing in the distance. The shape of his back the only thing breaking up the golden expanse of sky. Always searching.Mm, Eiji thinks.It’s like that.And Japan feels a lifetime away when he considers having never known Ash.





	four hours now since i've wandered through your place

**Author's Note:**

> title from futile devices by sufjan stevens!

Eiji's the last to stumble from out the shade of the trailer and into the open. He’s still half-asleep and it makes the clarity of the air compared to New York seem a dream-like thing. He yawns, rubs at his eyes with the back of his hand and blinks till Cape Cod feels solid around him. But the calm, the vastness — it’s like he’s vaulted and frozen mid-air. The sky is broad over the grassy hill they’ve stopped on, the ocean twinkling further out from below. And It looks like anywhere in the world the seaside has the same effect on people; Shorter and Max are both grinning at the view, Ibe-san already whipping his camera out. But Eiji looks for Ash, finds him leaning unaffected against the trailer. His eyes aren’t on the water but, instead, the ground. For a moment, he looks like he’s spacing out, but then his eyebrows furrow and he straightens up, scuffs his shoe against the dirt and shoves his hands in his pockets. Eiji thinks he’s about to join the rest of them, so he turns back to the ocean before Ash catches him watching. 

~

 

Now it seems Eiji’s always searching for Ash. He’d felt the absence in the house between the noise of all the others, saw the sun burning down into the reddening light leaking through the gap in the curtains, and so he’d slipped out the door to find Ash standing in the distance. The shape of his back the only thing breaking up the golden expanse of sky. Always Searching.  _Mm_ , Eiji thinks. _It’s like that_. And Japan feels a lifetime away when he considers having never known Ash.

There’s a chill in the air, the breeze strong and smelling of brine. Eiji unrolls his sleeves and tugs them back down to his wrists. He jumps the short height from the porch to the dirt path rather than bothering with the steps, then jogs to Ash, the crickets sounding from the overgrown grass. He’s a few metres away when hesitation stalls his feet, struck all over again at the image of Ash. There’s this set to his shoulders, Eiji notices it sometimes when he creeps up like this, that makes him feel like he’s not supposed to disrupt the space around Ash. A distance of sorts – something noble, picturesque. Eiji shakes his head. _Lonely._ But then he blinks, and Ash has turned. He watches as Eiji crosses over to him, then shifts back to face the ocean once they stand in line. And the horizon is what seems so picturesque now. Ash’s presence weighs on the air around Eiji, a grounding force.

Ash speaks first. “You’re lively today.”

Eiji wonders if he’d heard him running over. Oddly, he doesn’t feel self-conscious about it.

“You like it here?” Ash asks.

Shorter had driven them further into town for a grocery run earlier. Though really, Eiji thinks it was to give Ash some space. He considers Falmouth. They’d passed some unnervingly idyllic residential areas, hedges all cut a touch too uniformly, picket fences a bit too bright. But then the main street had been charming, lots of quaint shops and restaurants with cloth canopy awnings. A beautiful red brick 2-story children’s bookstore that made him think of Ash, pale light shining out three matching arched windows.  Shorter had said it was especially quiet without the tourist rush. Still, a somewhat unsettling number of white people. Then on the way back, Shorter lifting one hand from the wheel to gesture out the car window whenever the coast came into view, bag of Tostitos balanced on his lap. And there is something about it, the feeling of being far away, where the trees start to thin out and the stubborn Marram grass grows wild against the sands and still waters. It unknots something, makes Eiji’s breath come deep and even.

“It’s a nice place,” is what Eiji settles on.

“There’s nothing here.” Ash sounds tired, maybe. “Plus, it’s always windy.”

Eiji remembers the way Ash’s father had spoken to them this morning. Then the house behind them, its worn shutter siding, Griffin’s letters inside. The dusty teddy bear on the chest of drawers near Ash’s bedroom door. Eiji turns to look at him now, it’s not enough to go by his voice. “Do you hate it here?” 

Ash takes a moment, the wind in his hair counterpoint to the steadiness of his eyes. “I feel nothing towards it.”

_Nothing here._ A black cap with an embroidered red “B” on it, the strap adjusted to the smallest setting. Aluminium baseball bat against the dresser, paint chipped on the end and the handle. Three dents in the drywall. And Eiji knows violence comes in too many shapes to assume it’s far from here, even standing at the lip of the end of the world, even by the ocean. He wonders when the gulls stopped cawing.

It’s all something. Too windy.

“Mm,” Eiji says. “So, it’s like that.”

~

 

He’s sharing a room with two snoring men and Shorter won’t stop rubbing his feet together in his sleep but that’s not why Eiji’s still awake. He’s sitting up, can’t stop thinking of the next bedroom over, trying to parse those three depressions in the wall. More than that, Ash is curved towards him. He looks calm in sleep but Eiji can feel his body heat. That exact warmth is just simple enough to be miraculous, the proof of a strong, steadfast heartbeat, of all the chemical reactions and moving parts.

Ash looks calm. He looks seventeen.

Eiji’s chest clenches. It hurts, it makes him breathless, the sudden urge to smooth Ash’s hair from his forehead. Sometimes, like now, he remembers that conjugal visit. Ash’s touch moving from Eiji’s jaw to his hair and the way all the warmth had struck then turned ghost as soon as he'd felt the capsule on his tongue. But something had shifted afterwards. Sure, Ash had woken him up the morning after his release by jabbing at his cheek with a gun, but there was something like affection in the way he kept speaking to Eiji. At breakfast, they’d taken their plates to eat side by side on the sofa, shoulders brushing. 

Ash’s hair is somehow softer than he’d expected, looking almost silvery in the dark. Eiji sighs, it really seems to take on whatever colour the light is. He cards his fingers through the strands, the same calming way his mother used to do for him when he was a kid. Like that, he loses track of time and his thoughts until eventually, he feels his eyes grow heavy. He lifts his free hand to cover a yawn and when he looks back down, he freezes. Ash’s eyes are open. Bleary, but open.

But then Ash smiles. It's precious, how small the tug at the corners of his lips is. Like something only for this moment in time, only for this light. Something to guard in the space between them. Eiji exhales in a rush, lets his hand relax though he keeps his touch stilled. 

“You’re like a puppy when you yawn,” Ash says, voice muffled because his face is half pressed into his pillow, looking very self-satisfied at the comparison.

Eiji scoffs, if only because otherwise he won’t be able to hide a smile. “You were snoring,” he lies. “Did I wake you?” 

Ash shakes his head. “Nah, was nice.” He draws his hand out from under the covers to tap a finger to Eiji’s wrist. “Liar, I do not snore.” 

Eiji swallows. Thinks on it for only as long as he can without second-guessing, which is really very short, and manoeuvres so he’s lying back down, facing Ash on his side, hand still resting in the hair behind his ear. “Go back to sleep,” he whispers. 

Ash blinks. And Eiji starts to brush his fingers through the strands again, suppressing another yawn. “Bad dream?” He asks, when Ash still doesn’t close his eyes. 

“Gonna do target practice in the morning,” Ash says.

“Eh? Target practice?”

“Mmm. Can’t get ‘Oh my Darling, Clementine’ out of my head.”

Eiji muffles his laughter into his shoulder, immediately hears Max singing it.  “Now I'm hearing it in my head too, if that helps.”

Ash shakes his head. “Can’t believe we deal with this hell while the asshole snores away.”

“Ash?”

Ash hums, wraps his fingers loosely around Eiji’s wrist. 

“Go to sleep.” 

Instead, Ash presses his lips to Eiji’s pulse, his grip around Eiji’s wrist slackening right after. Then his eyes are fluttering shut, and Eiji feels his heart in his throat.

“You know you can shoot a gun underwater?” Ash says, but by the time the words are out his breathing has deepened and he’s already fast asleep again.

Eiji didn’t know that. These days more than ever, he feels like he knows nothing much at all. But then there’s this: Ash, strongest person he's met, leaning into his touch as naturally as a flower to the sun, no furrow between his brow, chest rising and falling even and slow. _I think we might need each other_ , Eiji thinks. And it’s right, he is sure of it, to be here. So, for now, Eiji stops mulling over _side-by-side_. Just tangles their fingers and closes his eyes.


End file.
